A City That Builds Its Own.
Austin runs on small operators. A taco trailer that graduated into a building on Burnet, a shop tucked into a South Lamar strip center, a service outfit off Ben White paying Travis County rent on a metal building. Our prepared DIY LED sign kits ship to all of it — welded aluminum cabinet, cut to your size, LEDs already mounted inside the sections.
Full-service sign companies here quote Austin prices. We build the hard part in our shop and hand you the easy part. You bolt the sections together, hang the cabinet, and keep up to 60% depending on your project. What you are skipping is the install labor and the markup, not the build quality.
The Kit, And The Price Difference
Shipping To Austin And Every Town Around It
Kits ship to Round Rock, Cedar Park, Pflugerville, Georgetown, Kyle, Buda, Leander and Bee Cave — and everywhere in between. If FedEx delivers there, your sign kit can too.
Austin has never been shy about doing the work in-house. Half the businesses on any given stretch of South Congress or East Sixth were finished out by the owner and two friends with a borrowed lift. A sign kit fits that habit exactly — the welding and the LED layout are already done, so what is left is bolts, a level and a Saturday. Sign rules here are specific and they change block to block, so confirm your local sign code and get the approved size in writing before you order.
Every prepared kit includes: an aluminum frame cut to your size with welded corners, LEDs mounted inside, and a 12-volt power supply with wiring hardware as listed in your written quote. Sign faces and graphics are available separately through DIY Graphics.
How Your Kit Gets To Austin
Austin traffic is the argument for ground shipping. Nobody wants a freight truck trying to reach a Burnet Road storefront or a South Congress building at four in the afternoon. Roughly 95% of our kits go FedEx Ground instead, riding the same route that already drops packages at your door, on a street the driver knows how to get down.
What shows up. A standard cabinet breaks into four long boxes. Six when splice joints are needed to keep a bigger frame inside ground shipping limits. The welded sections arrive cut to your size with the LEDs already mounted inside them, and the power supply and mounting hardware ride in the same boxes — one delivery, no second shipment of parts to sit around waiting on. Everything you need to stand the cabinet up shows up at once.
Delivery day. No dock, no liftgate, no delivery window to hold open. That matters in a city where a lot of shops are one bay in a converted house with a gravel lot and nowhere for a semi to turn around. One person can move the boxes off the porch and into the back room between customers.
Open the boxes the day they land. Look the sections over even if the cartons look perfect, and do it before install day rather than the morning of. Photograph anything crushed, torn or bent and keep the packaging exactly as it arrived — that is what a carrier claim is built on. Finding a problem the day a box shows up is a phone call; finding it with a crew standing on a ladder is a lost day.
Where to put it. Aluminum does not rust and it handles a Texas August without complaint. The LEDs and the power supply are a different story — keep those boxes inside until install day. Austin also gets the odd hard freeze that comes down I-35 and surprises everybody, so a garage or a stockroom beats leaving them under a tarp out back.
Measure Twice. Order Once.
Your kit is cut to a size, welded, and pre-lit before it ships, so the size has to be right the first time. In Austin that means three phone calls before you order, not after.
1. Ask what you're allowed
Start with the City of Austin if your address is inside city limits, and with Travis County if you are out in the unincorporated area. Austin's extraterritorial jurisdiction confuses this more than people expect, so ask which authority actually reviews your address before you assume. Round Rock, Cedar Park and Pflugerville each run their own sign code separately. Ask for the maximum sign area and height for your zoning district, whether your sign counts as wall-mounted or freestanding, and what setback applies. Sign area is usually tied to your building frontage, so the answer is specific to your address — not to the block or to the business next door.
2. Ask your landlord
If you're in a plaza or center, the landlord's sign criteria sit on top of the city code and are often stricter. Cabinet depth, face color, letter height and mounting method are all commonly spelled out. Get the criteria sheet in writing before you pick a size — it is cheaper than rebuilding a cabinet that the center won't approve.
3. Ask about engineering and wiring
Texas leaves a lot to the local jurisdiction, but a freestanding or pole sign here generally requires drawings and a foundation design sealed by a Texas-licensed engineer, sized to the wind speed the local code calls for. Plan on the lighting being permitted separately from the structure, which is the usual pattern here. Confirm both before ordering. Plan on a licensed electrician for the final hookup and inspection either way. We build the cabinet; the permit, the footing, the disconnect and the sign-off are local work done by local people.
Straight Answers For Austin Businesses
Can I get a kit built for a narrow storefront?
Yes. The cabinet is welded to whatever size you give us, so a long skinny face over a South Lamar bay is no harder than a square one. Measure the mounting surface, confirm what your landlord and your city will approve, then send us that number in writing and we build to it exactly.
Do the faces come with the kit?
No. The standard kit is the welded aluminum cabinet with the LEDs mounted inside, plus the power supply and hardware. Faces and graphics are a separate product on our DIY Graphics page. Plenty of Austin customers handle the cabinet themselves and order the face artwork alongside it.
Does Austin require a permit for a lighted sign?
Assume yes. Sign permits generally run through the City of Austin if you are inside city limits, or Travis County if you are not, and an illuminated sign commonly needs a separate electrical permit on top of the sign permit. Austin's code can also treat downtown and certain corridors differently from the rest of town, so get your approved size confirmed in writing first — the cabinet is welded to that number.
Who should do the electrical hookup?
Hire a licensed electrician for that last connection. These kits are not UL listed, and the power feed is inspected work in Austin the same as anywhere else in Texas. Everything before the wire is fair game for you — sections bolted square, cabinet mounted, faces set. Budget the electrician the same day you budget the permit.
Ready to get your written quote?
Every kit is prepared to order. Tell us about your project and we'll answer with a straight, written quote.
Contact DIY Sign Guy